From 2008 to 2013, artist Carmelle Safdie had the opportunity to collaborate with her grandmother, Vera Ronnen, on the four blue and yellow murals installed at the entrance of Herscher Hall. She recounts the crosscontinental journey these panels took to beautify the Skirball campus.

Having just opened my first solo show of paintings in New York, this project took place at the onset of my artistic career, and turned out to be the final commission in Vera’s five decades making vitreous enamel in architecture. This was Vera’s third commission for the Skirball, starting with the two-tiered centerpiece in Founder’s Courtyard in 1995, and the green and red panels flanking the stairway to the lilypond in Taper Courtyard, added in 2001.

Vera first studied traditional enameling arts as a teenage refugee in 1940s Geneva, Switzerland, following her escape from Bergen-Belsen on Kasztner’s train rescue operation. What’s unique about her practice is that she hand-sifted jewelry enamels, usually applied to small objects like earrings or decorative bowls, onto large-scale industrial panels. Fused with these supports at high temperatures in a furnace, the powdery colors emerge as deep and rich abstract compositions that are both visually ethereal yet extremely durable—making them suitable for incorporation into both interior and exterior architecture. Vera’s projects around the world include murals and elevator doors, and she always worked with architects on new construction projects. Her artworks are part of the overall design concept of each building, and she valued developing ideas, from sketch to fabrication, in conversation with architects.

What adds a layer of complexity at the Skirball is that the campus was designed by Vera’s son-in-law, my father, Moshe Safdie. Moshe and Vera first shared a client in Dick Scheuer, the chairman of Hebrew Union College. Dick was a great admirer of Vera’s work and personally funded eight concave murals installed throughout the Jerusalem campus. At the time, my father was also working with Uri D. Herscher, rabbi and founding director of the Skirball Cultural Center, on the first phase of the Los Angeles campus. Impressed with Vera’s work at Hebrew Union College, Uri proposed an enamel project for the Skirball, and added commissions to every design phase that followed.

At Hebrew Union College, the campus and artwork respond to the vernacular and historic architecture of their surroundings. The school is built on a traditional Mediterranean network of courtyards, and the enamels echo the Ottoman gates of Jerusalem’s Old City. Likewise, at the Skirball, the design accounts for its geographic positioning at the foothills of the Santa Monica Mountains, where buildings and gardens hug the steep topography. This connection is underscored by the artwork: the Founders Courtyard enamel reads like a waterfall cascading from above, and the mossy greens and concentrated red-oranges in the Taper Courtyard seem to grow out of the water lilies below.

In 2008, Vera laid out her plans for Skirball’s soon-to-be-built Herscher Hall. I would assist in the fabrication of this latest commission, mastering her enameling techniques while taking up residence at an industrial facility in England. At the time, Vera lived in Israel, but we kept in close touch. She liked the color palette of the paintings I’d just exhibited and asked me to develop sketches for the murals. I coated paper with oil paint, cut and collaged into various rhythms, and sent the studies to her studio. We mailed the materials back and forth, obtaining more precise elevations, refining the compositions to work with the proportions and pacing of the façade, and considered feedback from my father Moshe, until we landed on our design.

Vera made enamel tests and developed scale-models in her studio, but many of the factories she relied on for fabrication had closed or were no longer hospitable to artists. Luckily, we found A.J. Wells & Sons on the Isle of Wight in England, making signage for the London Underground. Not only did they have the facilities and equipment we needed, but they were also accustomed to accommodating artists with public art commissions.

Since the 1960s, Vera worked on pre-enameled steel covered in a black ground. She sifted opaque and transparent colors, freely and through stencils, built up through multiple firings. Her colors are complex and opulent, as light penetrates and reflects back through layers of powdered glass. Vera celebrated her medium and liked working on black to maintain a visual connection to the steel below. But at A.J. Wells, Vera was attracted to the silkscreen graphics used by the sign makers and wanted to adopt these materials and techniques. With the help of our project manager, David Knight, we made tests and refined our plans to incorporate hand-rolled sign colors over a prepared white ground. This undercoating would serve the yellows, which could go muddy over black, particularly well, and contribute to the overall vibrance of the finished artwork.

In 2009, Vera shipped kilos of her colors to A.J. Wells, and we worked for about a month on sixteen steel panels. Even with access to large furnaces, we had to break each mural into four more manageable parts. We worked on special tables, designed to hold the panels flush with each other while we sifted colors, then moved them from our makeshift studio to the furnace room below. In this way, we were able to work continuously across adjoining panels, then fire them individually, taking great care to regulate the temperature so that the murals fit seamlessly back together, and the colors appear consistent across the artwork.

The panels were packed and shipped to the US and stored until Herscher Hall was near completion. Vitreous enamel is an excellent material for public artworks because once fired the colors don’t fade, and the glass coating makes the steel impermeable to rust. But Vera was concerned that some corners had chipped in transit, which would compromise the artwork over time. In 2013, I traveled to Los Angeles to inspect and treat the panels prior to installation. I worked on site in a makeshift warehouse, and with the help of Belinda Valenti at Safdie Architects, we considered the finishing touches like hardware and rubber gaskets that secure the artworks into the wall.

In recent years, I have incorporated materials left over from this project, and Vera’s studio, into my own artwork. And as my attention turns to preservation through the Vera Ronnen Archive, I learn that the durability and archival nature of the work doesn’t always secure its fate. But at the Skirball, Vera’s work lives on—as the backdrop to daily visits, family gatherings, ceremony, and celebration.

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Carmelle Safdie is a New York City based artist, professor, and director of the Vera Ronnen Archive. Vera Ronnen (1930–2015) was a Hungarian-born artist and professor who lived and worked in Israel, London, and Basel, Switzerland.